For the first time in its history, the City of Pardubice has decided to recruit top European architects to design a major new civic amenity. On Wednesday, the City announced an international architectural and urban planning competition to find a winning design for the planned Dukla Sports Centre. This multifunctional sports complex will rank among the most important sports facilities built in the Czech Republic since the turn of the new millennium.

Mayor of Pardubice, Martin Charvát, explains the importance of the project:

We have a unique opportunity here to develop a site with a total area of 85,000 square metres in order to create a multifunctional sports complex of national importance, which will be open year-round not only for top-level sportsmen and women, but also for the general public. The complex will completely revitalise this partly derelict location – a large and valuable site close to the city centre, offering excellent transport access and strong potential for development. This represents a unique opportunity for us to create a sports facility that is not merely functional, but also showcases high-quality architecture. A modern European city like Pardubice deserves no less than this.

Preparations for the competition began in August 2014, when a project team was assembled consisting of representatives of Pardubice’s sports clubs plus architects and City officials. The team gathered ideas and proposals at a number of workshops featuring experts and members of the general public; there were also consultations with sports clubs and questionnaire-based surveys.

Project Manager, Miroslav Janovský, explains the current state of progress:

Now we know what facilities we want to have at the complex, but we’re not yet clear on what it should actually look like. The architects will need to devise optimum solutions for the locations of the individual buildings: an indoor athletics hall, a multifunctional sports hall for ball games (with a capacity of 2,500 spectators), plus facilities for gymnastics, martial arts and other sporting activities.

The project will also include several outdoor sports facilities plus all essential infrastructure – a restaurant, office premises, storage areas, accommodation, and facilities for physiotherapy, massage etc.

Deputy Mayor, Helena Dvořáčková – who is coordinating the project and will also be a member of the competition jury – describes how this ambitious complex will be built:

We are all well aware that a sports complex like this cannot realistically be built within just ten or fifteen years. However, it’s important for us to be absolutely clear on where exactly each component of the complex will be located. That will give us the general layout, and then the individual pieces in the ‘jigsaw puzzle’ will be put in place gradually over a period of time. The order of priority – in other words, which parts of the complex are built first, and which will follow later – will depend on agreement among the key stakeholders, including political representatives, sports professionals, and the general public.

The competition jury includes five architects: Saša Begović (from Croatia), Erik Moederscheim (from the Netherlands), and three Czech architects – Jitka Ressová, Ondřej Teplý and Edita Lisecová. Other jurors are representatives of the City of Pardubice, who already have long-standing experience with construction projects: Martin Charvát (Mayor of Pardubice), Helena Dvořáčková and Aleš Klose, with Jaroslav Menšík and Jakub Rychtecký.

Jury member Jakub Rychtecký, the Deputy Mayor with responsibility for sport, explains the long-term thinking that is necessary to implement such an ambitious project:

It would be naïve to think that we can built the entire complex within a single electoral period, because the cost would far exceed the capacity of the City’s budget or the various subsidy programmes that are available. In order to implement the project step-by-step, we need to have a very clear concept of how this high-potential site will be developed in several phases. That concept is what we intend to gain from this international architectural competition. From our perspective, the first priority will be the construction of an indoor athletics hall.

The competition is expected to attract entries from dozens of architectural studios in the Czech Republic and throughout Europe. It will be organised in two rounds, and candidates will remain anonymous throughout the assessment process. The eventual winner will be announced at the end of October 2016.

The winner will then be contracted to draw up the documentation for the necessary building permits, plus complete plans for the first phase of the project – the indoor athletics hall.

The City has earmarked up to 12 million CZK (around 450,000 EUR) for this planning and design work. The cost of the indoor athletics hall has been estimated at between 200 and 250 million CZK (approx. 7.5 – 9.25 million EUR).

The total costs of the competition will not exceed 2.8 million CZK; this sum includes prizes for the best entries, plus remuneration for the jury and the organising team. The prize for the winning entry is 900,000 CZK (around 33,000 EUR).

Site Visit

A site visit of the locality has been organised for May 13, 2016, at 10 am. Please register in order to attend by sending an email to the Inspector of the competition proposals at: Stepan.Vacik@mmp.czby no later than May 12, 2016.

Schedule

20th of April 2016 Announcement of the competition.

13th of May 2016 at 10:00 am site visit.

24th of June 2016 by midnight CET Deadline for submission of the questions (Round I).

4th of July 2016 by 5:00 pm CET Deadline for submission of competition designs (Round I) at the mailroom of the Pardubice CIty Hall.

22nd of July 2016 (preliminarily) The invitations to participate in Round II will be sent by the representative of the announcer.

5th of August 2016 by midnight CET Deadline for submission of the questions (Round II).

7th of October 2016 by 2:30 pm CET Deadline for submission of competition designs (Round II) at the mailroom of the Pardubice CIty Hall.

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